The Woman in the Fifth

Eighteen

I HIT THE street. I hailed a cab.

‘Rue Linne,’ I said.

As soon as I reached Margit’s address, I punched in the code and charged up the staircase to her apartment. When I reached her door I held down the buzzer. No reply. I banged on the door. No reply. I banged again and called her name. No reply.

‘Goddamnit, Margit — open the fucking door.’

Without thinking I threw my entire weight against it. There was a bit of give around the lock, but it still wouldn’t open. I stepped back and attempted another flying tackle. No further give, but my right shoulder suddenly hurt like hell. I ignored the pain and charged at the door again. There was a loud crunch as it splintered free of the lock. Gravity carried me into the apartment. I stumbled and landed on the bed, breaking my fall with my hands. I immediately began to cough, courtesy of the thick layer of dust that covered everything. I raised up my hands. They were coated with gray powder. I looked at the bed, upon which I had made love so many times with Margit. Soot enveloped the pillows, the blanket, the sheets. I stood up, dusting off my jeans. I walked into the front room. All the furniture was buried under dust. Ditto the little kitchen. The windows were opaque with grime. There were cobwebs in every corner of the room. The carpet was covered with rodent droppings. And when I opened the door of the side room — the room which Margit’s daughter called her own — I jumped back in horror. Three rats were huddled together on the floor, picking at the corpse of a dead mouse.

Then, suddenly, from behind me came a voice.

‘Get out.’

I spun around. Standing in the living room was a diminutive man of around sixty-five. He was gray, stooped, and holding a hammer in one hand. He glared at me with a mixture of anger and fear. His hand started to shake as he raised the hammer.

‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.

‘Who lives here?’ I asked.

‘No one.’

‘Do you know Margit Kadar?’

‘She’s dead.’

‘That can’t be—’

‘Get out now.’

The hammer trembled again.

‘Margit Kadar lives here,’ I said.

‘She lived here. Until 1980, when she went back to Hungary and died.’

‘No one has lived here since then?’

‘Look around you. Do you actually think someone lives here?’

‘I have been coming here twice a week for months.’

‘I’ve never seen you — and I see everybody who comes through the front door.’

‘You’re lying.’

The hammer trembled again.

‘I’m calling the police,’ he said.

‘What sort of fucked-up game is going on here?’

‘You’re crazy.’

He turned around and started to walk quickly toward the door. I chased after him. When I grabbed his shoulder, he spun around and swung the hammer at me. I just managed to duck out of its path, catching the concierge by the other wrist, then yanking it up behind his back. He squealed in pain.

‘Drop the hammer,’ I said.

‘Help me,’ he yelled to no one in particular. I yanked his arm harder. He squealed again.

‘Drop the hammer now or I’ll break your fucking arm.’

The hammer fell from his hand. The concierge began to whimper.

‘There’s forty euros in my wallet, if that’s what you’re after.’

‘All I’m after is the truth,’ I said. ‘Who lives here?’

‘Nobody.’

‘When did you last see Margit Kadar?’

‘In 1980.’

‘Liar.’

‘You have to believe me—’

‘The apartment is always clean, always—’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Why haven’t you seen me before? Why?’

‘Because I never have. Now will you please let me go.’

‘Did you know about the murder she committed?’

‘Of course. It was in all the papers. The man who ran over Zoltan and Judit.’

‘You know their names.’

‘Naturally I know their names. They lived here.’

‘With Margit?’

‘I don’t know why you are asking these mad questions.

This was Margit’s apartment. When she lost her husband and daughter, she went crazy and killed the driver of the car that killed her family. Then she fled back to Hungary, and the next thing I heard she was dead.’

‘And since then … ?’

‘Since then? Nothing. The apartment remains unused. The bills get paid, but no one has ever come in here. Until this afternoon. Please, monsieur …’

I suddenly felt as if the world was spinning in front of me. I was in a reality that might not be a reality that still might be real. Dust and cobwebs and mouse shit and rats. And yet, just a few days ago when I was here …

‘I don’t understand,’ I heard myself saying.

‘Please, monsieur, you’re hurting me.’

‘I just want the truth.’

‘I’ve told you the truth. You must believe me.’

I can’t believe anything right now.

‘If I let you go, do you promise not to start yelling for help or reaching for the hammer?’ I asked.

‘I promise.’

I pulled my hand away from his arm.

‘I’m leaving now,’ I said, taking one last bewildered glance around the room. ‘If you do anything …’

‘You have my word, monsieur. Just go now. Please.’

‘I’m sorry if I hurt your arm. I’m just …’

‘Go, monsieur, go …’

‘… lost.’

I raced down the stairs and out into the street, wondering, What now? I saw a cab. I flagged it down. I climbed inside.

‘Where are you going, monsieur ?’ the cabbie asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know? Monsieur, this is a taxi. I need a destination.’

One suddenly arrived in my head.

‘The Pantheon. Rue Soufflot.’

‘Tres bien, monsieur.’

He dropped me in front of Lorraine L’Herbert’s apartment building. There was no intercom speaker on the front door, but I got lucky. An elderly woman with a small dog was going inside as I approached. After she punched in the code, I held the door open for her and followed her inside. She thanked me, though I could see her looking over my bedraggled state and wondering if she did the right thing by letting me in.

‘Are you visiting someone, monsieur?’

‘Madame L’Herbert.’

That reassured her. I excused myself and headed up the stairs. When I reached L’Herbert’s apartment, I rang the bell. No answer. I rang it again, holding it down a long time. From inside, I heard L’Herbert shouting, ‘All right, all right, I’m coming.’ After a minute, the door opened. She was in a long silk bathrobe. Her face was covered in some black substance — a makeup mask — which she was attempting to rub off with a handful of tissues.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘My name is Harry Ricks and I was at your salon a couple of months ago.’

‘You were?’ she said, staring at my unkempt state.

‘I met somebody here — a woman named Margit Kadar …’

‘And you came by to get her phone number? Hon, we’re not a dating service. Now if you’ll excuse me …’

I put my foot in the door as she tried to close it.

‘I just need to ask you—’

‘How’d you get in here?’

I told her.

‘Well, the salon’s on Sunday night, and you know the rules: you have to call up and reserve your place. Coming by like this, unannounced …’

‘You have to help me. Please.’

She looked me over with care.

‘You’re American, right?’

‘You don’t remember me?’

‘We have fifty to one hundred people every week, so, no, I don’t remember everyone. Something wrong, hon? You look like you’ve been sleeping in the park.’

‘Margit Kadar. The name doesn’t ring a bell?’ She shook her head.

‘You sure?’ I asked, then described her. Again L’Herbert shook her head.

‘Why is this so important? You in love or something?’

‘I just need to verify that she was here the night I was here.’

‘Well, if you met her here, then she was here.’

‘Please, could you get your assistant to check your records?’

‘He’s out right now. If you phone him in about two hours—’

‘I don’t have two hours. Don’t you have a database or something where you could look her up?’

She stared down at my foot in her door.

‘You’re not going to go away until I do this, are you?’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘If you agree to let me shut the door, I’ll see if I can help you.’

‘You will come back?’

‘Fear not,’ she said with an ironic smile. ”Cause if I don’t, y’all are going stand here, beating on my door till I do come back. Am I right, hon?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Back in a jiffy.’

I removed my foot. She closed the door. I sat down on the stairs and rubbed my eyes, and tried to get that image of Margit’s apartment under dust out of my brain. I failed. No doubt the concierge had called the cops by now. No doubt they were probably searching for me. If they couldn’t pin two murders on me, they could still have me arrested for assault and general lunacy. By the end of the day I could be locked up in some madhouse, awaiting deportation back home. Imagine what will happen if word gets out that I was thrown out for insisting that I was romantically involved with a dead woman. Then again, compared with the scandal which had engulfed Robson …

But it wasn’t just Robson. It was also Omar — because I’d mentioned to her how I despised his toilet habits. And then there was Yanna’s husband: ‘… now you know why I hate any man who hits a woman in the face.’

Then: ‘You are going to have to kill Yanna’s husband.’

But surely she didn’t take it on herself to beat him with a baseball bat … any more than she ran over that desk clerk at Le Select. But again, I had told her of the harm these people had done — or were threatening to do — to me. And then …

‘Brasseur was a deeply unpleasant man,‘ I informed Inspector Coutard during my first interrogation.

To which he said, ‘So we have learned from anyone who worked with him. Nonetheless, it is also intriguing to note that — just as you had a little war with Monsieur Omar and he was found dead on his beloved toilet — so you also had a little war with Monsieur Brasseur and he was struck down by a car …’

There was a pattern. I talk about someone who has done me wrong, she responds with …

No, that’s so way off-beam …

But her being dead is just a little off-beam too.

I don’t get it …

There’s only one way of ‘getting’ it. Show up for your rendezvous with her today at five.

The apartment door opened. Lorraine came out. The remnants of her black makeup mask had gone. She was now holding a printout and a small card.

‘OK, hon. I checked our guest list for the night you were there, and as you’ll see …’

She handed me the page.

‘… you’re on the guest list, but Margit Kadar isn’t. I ran her name through our system — which only goes back ten years. Nothing. Then I checked our Rolodex, where we always kept the names of anyone who had ever come to the salons prior to 1995. And guess what I found … ?’

She handed me the Rolodex card. On it was written Zoltan and Margit Kadar, their address on the rue Linne and a date: May 4, 1980 … just a few weeks before the accident.

‘So she did come to the salon?’ I asked.

‘Once — with her husband … but I don’t remember much about them. Hell, how could I, considering the amount of human traffic that comes through here every week. She and her husband never came back. So they were filed away as “One-Offers”.’

‘And there’s absolutely no way she could have snuck in here on the night I came?’

‘None at all. We’re pretty strict on security for the salon. You don’t get past this door unless you’re on the list. And we certainly don’t like it when people show up unannounced. But let me ask you something, hon. If you think you met her here, and I have proof that you didn’t … well, what sort of conclusion do you expect me to draw from that?’

‘Thank you for your time,’ I said and headed quickly down the stairs.

Outside there were no taxis. Rain was falling. I ran down the boulevard Saint-Michel to the Line 4 metro. I hopped on, my clothes now sodden with the rain. I started to shiver — the same sort of feverish shakes that had hit me on my first day in Paris. As always, no one was speaking in the metro, and the passengers in my carriage were avoiding eye contact. But several of them stole glances at this derelict man with wet, grimy clothes and several days’ growth of beard and sunken eyes and chattering teeth.

At Chateau d’Eau I got off the metro and went back out into the rain. By the time I reached the Internet cafe, the febrile shakes had escalated into a sense of total depletion. Mr Beard looked me over with cold anger as I walked in. Without saying anything, he went to the front door and locked it.

‘You didn’t go to work last night.’

‘That’s because I was a guest of the police in one of their better cells.’

‘You told the cops …’

‘Nothing.’

‘Why did they arrest you?’

‘I was under suspicion …’

‘For the murder of Omar … ?’

‘Yes,’ I said, deciding it was best not to mention anything about Yanna’s husband.

‘Did they also tell you about the man whose wife you fucked?’

‘They did.’

‘And did you tell them it was Monsieur Sezer and Mahmoud who did it?’

‘Of course not.’

‘They’ve arrested them … but they’ve let you go. Why?’

‘I’m not the cops, but the cops generally don’t arrest people unless they have evidence—’

‘You planted the evidence—’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘We know it was you—’

‘Why would I—’

‘Because you killed Omar and Monsieur Attani, that is why, and then you put the weapons—’

‘My fingerprints weren’t on the weapons. Mahmoud’s were—’

‘Ah, so the cops did tell you they arrested Mr Sezer and Mahmoud.’

‘If I allegedly “planted” the weapons, then why were Mahmoud’s fingerprints on them?’

‘You could have left them somewhere obvious in Mr Sezer’s office. Mahmoud might have picked them up to hide them—’

‘Mahmoud would have seen the blood on them and thrown them out. But maybe Mahmoud isn’t the cleverest guy to have walked the face of the earth. Maybe, having killed Omar and Attani on the orders of Sezer, he simply threw the weapons into some back room, some attic, not thinking that the cops would—’

‘The weapons were found below the sink in Mahmoud’s room. They were placed there, the police were called—’

‘And I was in police custody at the time—’

‘You could still have put them there. Did you also tell them about where you worked?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘Liar. They raided the building last night, pulled everything apart. Fortunately, after the arrests of Monsieur Sezer and Mahmoud, we had a little time to clear out—’

‘Were you making snuff movies and bombs there?’

‘Stop asking questions. You are in enough trouble right now—’

‘Trouble for what? I kept my mouth shut. I showed up every night at midnight. I never asked questions. I never interfered—’

‘But you saw—’

‘I saw nothing.’

‘Liar.’

‘Think what you like. I didn’t send the cops to you, I played by the rules you set.’

Pause. He stared at me for a very long time. Then: ‘You go back to work tonight.’

‘But what is there to guard?’

‘That is not your business.’

‘Surely the cops are treating downstairs as a crime scene. Surely they’ll have men guarding the place.’

‘The cops are no longer there. They have finished all their “tests”. They are gone.’

‘Did you pay them off or something?’

‘They are gone. And you must return to your work tonight.’

I knew that if I now said, ‘No damn way,’ I wouldn’t be allowed off the premises. I also knew that if I did show up for work tonight, I might not ever walk out of there alive. The fever was now making me shiver. I clutched myself tightly.

‘You sick?’ he asked.

‘Didn’t get much sleep in the cell …’

‘Go home, get some rest, be at work on time tonight.’

Then he opened the door and motioned for me to leave.

On the way back to my room, I thought, They are going to kill me. They just want to do it in an enclosed environment where they can make me disappear with minimal detection. There was only one thing to do: flee.

But before I did that, I had to go see Margit at the agreed hour of five. I had to convince myself I hadn’t gone completely crazy. I had to know the truth.

I also needed to lie down for a couple of hours, before this fever overwhelmed me. I would take a nap, then pack a bag, then arrive at the rue Linne, then run to the Gare du Nord and get the last Eurostar out to London. God knows what I would do there once I arrived, but at least it would be away from all this. That’s all that mattered to me now: disappearing from view.

But when I reached my room, I found the door half-open, the lock dangling from its hinges, everything trashed. Shelves had been ripped from the walls, drawers pulled out, their contents dumped. All my clothes had been rifled through, many of them torn. The bed had been overturned, the sheets and duvet ripped apart, the mattress split down the middle. I stood in the doorway, stunned. Then I was immediately on my knees by the sink. Everything in the cabinet had been pulled out, but whoever rampaged through my room didn’t notice the loose linoleum covering the floor. Pulling it up, I reached into the same hole that Adnan once used as a safe and found the money I had been storing was still there. I pulled out the plastic Jiffy bags in which I had placed twenty euros a day from my wages. I quickly counted the three separate wads. Twenty-eight hundred euros — the total savings from all my nights of work.

My relief was enormous. But there was a possible stumbling block from my newly hatched escape plan: the backup disk for my novel. I kept it hidden in a paperback copy of Graham Greene’s This Gun for Hire. Scouring the debris on the floor, I found the book and rifled through its pages. The disk was gone.

Don’t panic … don’t panic … it has to be here somewhere.

But I did panic. I rummaged again through all the debris, getting more frantic as I couldn’t find it. I must have spent the better part of a half-hour combing every corner of the room, my anxiety growing as it dawned on me that the disk had been taken.

But why take the disk and nothing else? It wasn’t as if it contained secret codes or some revelation that would overturn the foundations of all Judeo-Christian faith. It was just a backup copy of my novel — insignificant to anyone but myself.

The thief — having found nothing of value here — probably pocketed it as a way of saying ‘Fuck You’ for not leaving anything for him to steal.

Or maybe it was Sezer’s henchmen. They knew I was writing something in my ‘office’ at night. Maybe they decided to really stick it to you by lifting the only backup copy of the novel you had.

But it wasn’t my only copy … as I had hidden another disk in a crevice above the ‘emergency exit’ in my office. To retrieve it, however, would mean returning to that building … and I knew that was impossible now. The ransacking of my room — and Mr Beard’s menacing belief that I had set up Sezer and his stooge to take the fall for those murders — heightened my belief that the only thing to do was disappear. But with my laptop still impounded by the cops, I was in a quandary. If I left Paris now, I would be doing so without a copy of the novel I had worked on for the past four months. Though the police might send on my laptop computer at some future date, they also might decide to hang on to it. Which would leave me with nothing to show for all those midnight-to-dawn stints in that claustrophobic room. I had nothing else in my life right now but that novel. I couldn’t … wouldn’t … leave Paris without it.

The fever was spreading. Every joint in my body pained me. But I couldn’t afford to give in to exhaustion. The longer I stayed in Paris, the more chance I would have of ending up like my room: broken into pieces. Time was of the essence. They could be coming for me any minute.

I scrambled through the debris. I found my suitcase. Amid the torn clothes, I discovered a pair of jeans, a shirt, underwear and socks that had not been shredded. I reached into the shower stall and grabbed soap and shampoo and a toothbrush and toothpaste from the medicine cabinet. My portable radio — though badly dented by having been tossed from my bedside table — still worked. Along with everything else I’d rounded up, I dumped it into the suitcase, stuffed the cash and my passport into my jacket pocket, and slammed the broken door on my chambre de bonne, thinking, I’m never coming back here again.

Out in the street, I scanned the rue de Paradis to see if anyone was on the lookout for me. It seemed clear. I wheeled my bag down to the faubourg Saint-Martin. Five minutes and several turns later, I walked into the commissariat de police. I asked to see Inspector Coutard. The man on the desk told me he was out of the building. I asked to see Inspector Leclerc. A phone call was made. I was told to take a seat. Leclerc came downstairs ten minutes later. He nodded hello and immediately noticed my suitcase.

‘Planning to move back into your cell?’ he asked.

‘Very funny,’ I said.

‘Leaving Paris then?’

‘A short break to London,’ I said. ‘And I need my laptop computer.’

‘What laptop computer?’

‘The one you confiscated when you raided the office.’

‘I wasn’t part of that assignment. It was another division. If they have the laptop—’

‘Inspector Coutard told me they did have the laptop—’

‘Then you should speak to Inspector Coutard.’

‘But he’s not here now.’

‘He should be back tomorrow—’

The man on the desk came in here.

‘No, he’s taking four days off.’

‘He didn’t bother to tell me,’ Leclerc said.

‘Is there any chance you might still be able to locate the laptop?’ I asked.

‘If it is part of an ongoing investigation … no. I cannot interfere with evidence. And as the inspector in charge is not here to approve its return to its alleged owner—’

‘I am the owner.’

‘So you say. But without Inspector Coutard here to verify—’

‘Couldn’t you phone him on his cellphone?’

‘While he is on his vacances? Impossible. More to the point, he would tell you the same thing. If the computer is part of an investigation, it stays with us until we have finished the investigation.’

‘But couldn’t I copy something off the hard disk?’

‘That would be tampering with evidence.’

‘It’s just my novel.’

‘Your novel could be part of the evidence.’

‘But how?’

‘As it is not my investigation—’

‘I need a copy of my novel so I can continue writing it.’

‘You didn’t make a backup copy?’

‘I lost it,’ I said, not wanting to tell Leclerc about my trashed room, which might lead to more questions and him insisting that I stay around for a few more days in Paris … which I simply wasn’t prepared to do.

‘Too bad,’ he said. ‘Surely a proper novelist makes more than one copy of his work in progress.’

‘I’m just a goddamn amateur.’

‘No need to get touchy, monsieur. And if you don’t mind me saying so, you are looking very unwell and smelling rather ripe.’

‘You didn’t exactly provide me with an en-suite bathroom.’

‘Be pleased that you were released … with your passport. The inspector could still be legally detaining you.’

‘You could watch me make the copy.’

‘It would still be tampering with evidence.’

‘That novel is my life.’

‘Then I can’t understand why you didn’t duplicate “your life” many times over.’

And he turned and walked back toward his office.

I sat slumped in a chair, trying to figure out my next move. The cop behind the desk spoke.

‘Monsieur, if you have no further business here, I must ask you to leave.’

‘OK, OK,’ I said, standing up. ‘Any chance I could leave my bag here for a couple of hours?’

The cop looked at me as if I had lost all reason.

‘Monsieur, this is a commissariat de police, not a vestiaire.’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ I said as I wheeled my suitcase toward the door.

Outside I checked my watch: 1.23 p.m. Just under four hours to go before I could cross the threshold again at rue Linne. I needed shelter before then. So I walked down the first side street to my left and saw a cheap hotel — Le Normandie — directly in front of me. It looked shabby from the outside and had a one-star rating pasted on to its doorway. It looked shabby on the inside. The lobby was narrow, with peeling paint, scuffed linoleum, fluorescent lighting. I rang the bell on the desk. No answer. I rang it again. An elderly African man came out, rubbing his eyes.

‘I need a room, please,’ I said.

‘Check-in is at three.’

‘Is there any chance … ?’

‘Three p.m., monsieur.’

‘I’m not well. I’m …’

He studied me for a moment, trying to see if I was telling the truth or just trying to get an extra ninety minutes free of charge.

‘How many nights?’ he asked.

‘Just one.’

‘With shower?’

‘Absolutely.’

He turned to the box of keys and pulled out one. It had a wooden tag on it marked ‘7’.

‘Forty-five euros, payable now.’

I handed him the cash.

‘Second floor, turn right.’

‘Thank you.’

He just shrugged and disappeared back through the door behind the front desk.

The room was a dump. I didn’t care. It was shelter. I stripped off my filthy clothes. I dug out the soap and shampoo and stood under the drizzle that passed for a shower. I dried myself off with the tiny towel that had been provided, amazed that it was clean. I set the clock on my radio to wake me up in two hours. I climbed between the sheets. I shut my eyes. I felt as if I was falling. Within seconds the bed was drenched with sweat. My teeth were chattering, and I clutched the pillow as if it was a life preserver. I blacked out. I woke up again to the sound of France Musique playing Berlioz. The Symphonie fantastique. 3.45 p.m. Back into the shower. Clean clothes. My body still ached with fatigue, but the fever had broken. I put my jacket back on, tapping the pocket where my money and passport were stored. A voice in my head whispered, Just leave now. You can get the laptop back from the cops some other time. You can walk away from all the questions about Margit and write it off as …

As what? My insanity. A four-month delusion which I sleepwalked through?

Call it whatever you like. Quit while you’re ahead.

I will quit — as soon as I’ve confronted her and found out what I need to know.

And what is that?

Am I insane?

No comment.

Down the crumbling stairs of the hotel, out into the street, a left turn, and an abrupt stop at an Internet cafe on the boulevard de Sebastopol. I checked my watch again: 4.07 p.m. I had to be out the door and on the metro toward the Fifth in under ten minutes. I was going to check the local Ohio papers to find out more about the alleged downfall of my nemesis … but first I opened my mailbox. There was only one email waiting for me — from my former colleague, Doug Stanley. It explained the entire scandal breaking around Robson; how the Dean’s computer crashed last week and a technician was called in to remedy the problem and discovered:

… something like two thousand pornographic images of children on his hard drive. The technician informed the college authorities, the authorities called the cops, the cops called the Feds, and Robson is now being held in a slammer near Cleveland, trying to raise the $1 million bail that has been set. Ever since this went down, he’s been protesting his innocence, saying that somebody ‘planted’ these images on to his computer. But the Feds released a statement yesterday, saying their experts had conclusive evidence that he had downloaded all this stuff himself.

The man is in total shit — of the type that simply won’t wash away. The college has dismissed him, the scandal has been picked up by all the usual tabloid media, and rumor has it that he’s under suicide watch in jail. The prosecutor on the case has announced that he plans to make an example of Robson — ‘horrible breach of public trust, especially for an educationalist’ — and demand a minimum twenty years … as Robson was trading these images with other likeminded perverts. Unlike trading baseball cards, trading in child pornography can be classified as ‘trafficking in obscene material’ which is a Federal offense. The DA also stated that he had proof that Robson was the ringleader for this ring of kiddy porn collectors, as they also found some credit card account he’d set up for collecting payment for this stuff. It’s unbelievable … and further proof that you can never really know the dark side of other people.

There has been another victim of Robson’s downfall, and that is Susan. In studying every document on the hard drive of Robson’s computer, the Feds found a sequence of emails he sent her several months before he drove you out of your job. The emails were love letters — and, I hate to tell you this (but you need to know), very graphic when it came to intimate stuff between them. This has provoked a subsidiary scandal, which has just broken in the press. And the college has suspended Susan without pay while it conducts an investigation into whether she received tenure because she was Robson’s mistress.

I called Susan last night. She sounded terrible — appalled about the revelations about Robson and pretty convinced that it was just a matter of time before the college permanently dismissed her. She was also worried about how Megan would take all this, and how she was going to meet the bills, since the scandal was also going to make her unemployable as a professor. I’m going over to see her this afternoon. Without wanting to unsettle you any further, Susan really struck me as shaky — and on the verge of some sort of breakdown. I’ll report back by email later.

As you can well imagine, the entire college is reeling. In the wake of all these revelations, many faculty members have told me that they now felt guilty about voting for your dismissal. Because among the ‘love letters’ he sent Susan, they also found ones in which he talked about how he was going to ‘go public’ on your affair with Shelley, and decimate you. I’m afraid that Susan’s email reply was not pretty: ‘Let him have it’ or words to that effect.

Sorry to have to lay this all at your feet … but I did think you should hear it from a friend rather than read about it or get a call from some hack journalist, wanting to know how you were taking the news.

Be grateful you’re in Paris, and away from this shabby Peyton Place. I’ll be at home this evening if you want an update.

Best

Doug

I put my head in my hands, and actually felt appalled at what had befallen my ex-wife. Yes, the ‘Let him have it ‘ comment did rankle. But I still feared for her now.

I signed off the computer and decided to hop a cab to the rue Linne. The traffic was light. We made it there in less than twenty minutes. I checked my watch: 4.58 p.m. I walked up and down outside her doorway for two minutes, then took in a deep steadying breath and punched in the code.

The door clicked open. I entered the building. I scanned the courtyard. Nothing different. But when I turned toward the concierge’s lodge I saw the man with whom I had scuffled yesterday. He was sitting in his chair and staring out at me. But he also seemed to be looking right through me. So I walked over to his window and tapped three times on it. No response from him. His face was blank — as if he was in some sort of catatonic state. I tapped again on the window. Nothing. I opened the door. I put my hand on his shoulder. His flesh was warm to the touch — but still no recognition that someone was now shaking him, trying to rouse him from his stupor. I shouted, ‘Can you hear me?’ His eyes remained frozen, his body immobile. I felt a chill run through me. I backed away from the lodge, spooked. Get out … get out now. But when I tried the main door in the courtyard, it was locked. I must have spent five minutes struggling to open it. You can’t open it, because you can’t leave. I looked for other ways out. There were none. I stared up the staircase leading to Margit’s apartment. You have no choice now. You have to go up there.

On the way up to her apartment, I tried knocking on every other door en route. Not one answer. Had I ever heard any neighbors before? Had I ever been cognizant of other life in this place? Had I … ?

As I approached her floor, her door opened. She stood there in her usual black lace nightgown, a sardonic smile on her lips.

‘What did I tell you about not coming here other than at our agreed time?’

Her voice was calm, quiet. Her smile grew. I approached her, saying nothing. I grabbed her and kissed her fully on the lips.

‘You taste real,’ I said.

‘Do I?’ she said, pulling me inside the apartment. She took my hand and stuck it between her legs. ‘And do I feel real?’

I pushed a finger inside her. She groaned.

‘It seems so,’ I said, putting my free hand through her hair and kissing her neck.

‘But there’s one big difference between us, Harry.’

‘What’s that?’

With one sudden movement, she pushed me off her. As I stumbled, I saw the flash of a cut-throat razor in her spare hand. It headed toward me, slicing me lightly across the hand.

‘Fuck,’ I screamed as blood began to pour from the wound.

‘The difference is …’

She took the razor and slashed her throat. I screamed again … but then stood there, dumbfounded, as nothing happened.

‘You get it, Harry?’ she asked.

Now she took the razor and sliced her left wrist, cutting deep into the skin. Again, not a single sign of injury.

‘The difference is: you bleed, and I don’t.’